


You're Hiding Something From Me

by SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Fear, M/M, Magical Accidents, Magical Pregnancy, Married Couple, Misunderstandings, Misuse of the Force, Mpreg, Oblivious, Protectiveness, Serious Injuries, Spell Failure, Stupidity, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:37:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8517025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf/pseuds/SinceYouAskedMeForATaleOf
Summary: After Emperor Hux almost dies in an assassination attempt Kylo takes it upon himself to find a solution. He's found a spell in an ancient Sith text that seems to do the trick... Or at least he thinks it will...





	

**Author's Note:**

> A flash fic prompt I received back in May :/

Kylo wasn't in the gymnasium. Or the training simulators. Or the shooting range.    
  
He wasn't in the library, working though the few tomes of Sith lore Hux had managed to obtain for him, his lips moving absently as he translated with an aching slowness that always put the Emperor's teeth on edge with frustration.    
  
He wasn't making his rounds of the palace's labyrinthine halls, or strategizing with security.    
  
He wasn't in their private quarters, or the audience chambers, or the throne room.   
  
He wasn't anywhere that Hux could think of and, loath as he was to tell his security detail that he'd somehow lost his husband, the Emperor knew he'd have to resort to the tracking devices he'd insisted be fitted into all the Lord Protector's clothes.    
  
Kylo had protested at the time that he was not some hunting hound to be tagged and surveilled. The fact that they had saved his life twice- first on Starkiller and later as Snoke's citadel crumbled at the death of it master- was immaterial to him. It was only when he'd witnessed the former General wake half screaming and trembling from a PTSD driven nightmare of losing him that Kylo had consented at all. Though he demanded that they should only be activated in an emergency, not to follow his every move.    
  
It was a gross breach of the trust between them to actually use it, but what choice did Hux have when Kylo himself had already shattered that trust? The last few months had changed him. He'd become quiet and preoccupied, finding endless excuses not to retire to their bed before Hux was asleep, avoiding the casual intimacy that had soothed both their troubled souls. No matter what conversational gambit Hux had tried Ren had shut him out or given monosyllabic answers until the Emperor walked away in despair.   
  
This new mood had all begun with the assassination attempt. A poorly planned and executed shooting by the last remnants of the Resistance, it had almost succeeded by sheer luck alone. The shot had sailed wide, barely ruffling Armitage's hair as it went by. But the ricochet had caught him in the shoulder, disrupting an old injury and leaving Hux in a pool of blood on the throne room floor. Kylo had lost control and torn apart the suspects with a wild outburst of the Force.    
  
The Emperor's recovery had been slow and painful. Hux hadn’t trusted that his reign could survive an extended suspension in bacta, so he had healed the old fashioned way with stitches and topical ointments. He had hated every moment of the process and his mood had been made all the worse by Kylo’s slow fade from his life. At first the Lord Protector had lingered at his bedside, alert but distant and hesitant to touch his Emperor. With each day of recovery Kylo seemed to slip further from his grip, and with each day Hux had found himself sinking a little deeper into despair.   
  
They had made love only once since the attempt on Hux’ life. They’d clung to one another the night when he’d been released from medical, every movement slow and desperate and filled with all the words they had failed to say to one another aloud. Or so Hux had believed. He had hoped that it would rekindle their marriage. He had hoped it would bring his Lord Protector back into his arms.   


Instead it had been the first wedge driven between them. Hux had woken to an empty bed and an absent husband. It soon became a familiar experience, though repetition did not dull the sting.   
  
Dragging the dusty monitoring device from the back of a desk drawer, Hux looked around himself guiltily as if Kylo was going to emerge from the shadows and chide him for his prying. Though if he had appeared to voice his disgust, that would at least have settled Hux’ mind somewhat. Of course, the room remained empty and undisturbed. 

With a muted bleep the display instantly revealed Kylo’s location- directly above the Emperor’s head. On the roof? Or in it?

* * *

It took him four hours and reference to the original blueprints to locate the room Kylo had carved out for himself in the eaves of the building. False walls had been added to disguise the space, and the heart-stoppingly narrow ladder leading to it.

Kylo hadn’t bothered to reroute any power lines, choosing to illuminate the cramped space with small lamps that hung from the beams of the low ceiling. The light was dull and fitful, flickering as the inadequate batteries fought against old corroding connections. It was almost like candle light. 

Every inch of the floor was covered in cushions, blankets, and books, which gave the room a warm and cosy feel despite its position above the palace’s insulation. Kylo himself was almost camouflaged amongst the heaps of soft furnishing, the rich fabric of the billowing robes he preferred these days blending almost seamlessly into his surroundings. Hux might not have noticed him at all if he hadn’t looked up.

“Armitage? What… what are you doing up here?” Kylo said while he guiltily shoved an ancient looking text beneath a cushion. It wasn’t a volume that Hux recognised, perhaps one of Kylo’s Knights had found it for him. 

Kylo was kneeling on the floor on a stack of cushions, his wide back turned towards the entrance so that all Hux could see of him was a sliver of profile.

“I was looking for my husband.”

“Don’t you have an Empire to run?”

“Yes, but I can hardly do that when my Lord Protector is neglecting his duties.” Hux counted. His tone had aimed for soothing but it still grazed the line into chiding. 

Kylo flushed, apparently irritated at being questioned by a man that was supposed to be his equal. “I  _ am _ completing my duties! You almost died! I have to do something to…” He gulped. “I..  _ have _ to do something to stop that from ever happening again!”

“Kylo?”

“I’ve been working on this for months, I… I can’t lose you, there… there has to be a way to keep you from dying!” He was almost screaming now, loosely waving the book he’d previously hidden in the air as he continued, oblivious to Hux’ horror struck expression. “I tried this spell that the Ancient Sith swear by and I… I thought it had worked, I felt a surge in the Force, but... but then nothing changed about you in my perception. So it  _ must _ have been wrong and now I can’t work out how to fix it!!”

Moving with deliberate care Hux sank down onto his knees behind his husband and held him as he sobbed. Tears were pouring down the man’s face as he shook, repeating over and over that he had to fix things. Hux wasn’t really listening to his words. When had he last held Kylo in his arms? Three months? Four? He counted the days and found that almost five months had passed since he was released from medical. Five months since they’d last been intimate. What a change that time had made on his Lord Protector.

Where Kylo had once been firm and rippling with muscle his limbs were turning soft and smooth. There was still strength there, beneath the surface, but it was no longer the carefully honed perfection of their early relationship. When had he last exercised? How much weight had he gained and hidden under these wide velvet robes? Pressing closer Hux marvelled at the plush warm feeling of the flesh under his hands. He wanted to touch... 

Suddenly he realised that Kylo was no longer speaking, instead pointing to a page of the open book, as if in explanation for a point Hux had not heard. He let his eyes skim the page and his heart skipped in moment of thrilling suspicion.   
  
Hux forced himself to pause, holding himself still despite his desire to move, his cheek resting against Kylo's hair and his hands placed lightly at lower edge of his Lord's ribs.   
  
"You used this spell?” He asked nonchalantly, hoping that Kylo would not notice his earlier lack of attention. “Can you read it to me?"   
  
"To create renewed life, combine the seed of both subjects under a waxing moon and place onto the abdomen of the subject most in tune to the Force..."   
  
"Ah." Hux said, a hint of something like excitement creeping into his voice as he allowed his posture to relax and his hands to drift lower. His fingers pressed against the wide loose robes, pushing inward to feel the telling change in Kylo's physique.

Kylo caught at his wrists, holding his hands back from his skin. “Don’t. I haven’t had time to train. I’ve… I’ve neglected myself Armitage, you shouldn’t have to touch that.”

“Touch what?” Hux teased, flexing his fingers towards his husband’s middle. 

“This!” Kylo hissed, pushing Hux’ palms against the swell of stomach that had once been a sculpted eight pack. “This  _ mess _ that I let develop because I was too busy to look after myself as I should! I’ve gotten fat- fat and tired and sore working here every day to find a way to save you!”

Hux smoothed his fingers over the taut skin. He had a small paunch of his own now, the natural result of his busy but sedentary schedule as Emperor. It was barely noticeable in his carefully tailored clothes, but he’d prodded it in irritation enough to know what fat felt like. “You’re not fat, just semi-literate. You mistranslated."   
  
Kylo blinked at the insult. "What?"   
  
"There, where 'create' and 'life' are joined by that symbol, you see?" Hux pointed at the original Sith text with one long finger before he dropped his hand back down against his husband's abdomen, unconsciously rubbing gentle circles across his stomach.   
  
"It means renewal," Kylo said frowning, "I know it does, it was in that text about lightsaber maintenance..."   
  
"A lightsaber is not a living being, is it Ren?"   
  
"Well, scholars of the Force have theorised that..."   
  
"Grammatically speaking, not philosophically."   
  
"Oh, well then, no."   
  
"The sentence says 'to create new life', not 'to create renewed life'," Hux said softly, pressing a kiss to his Lord Protector's neck. "Think about your symptoms in light of that.  _ Maybe _ think about why a spell might involve combining semen and applying it to your stomach? Because that  _ really _ should have been a clue, Ren, my dear. I'm not a Force user and yet the purpose seems obvious to me."   
  
"I don't understand."   
  
"I... Really? Did... did no one ever have The Talk with you? About human reproduction?"   
  
"Why would they?" Kylo sounded baffled by this new chain of questioning, "we're both men Hux, I've known I preferred men exclusively since I was twelve and I was being trained as a Jedi from age eight. They're celibate. Why would I need to know about things that were never going to concern me?"   
  
With a frustrated, disbelieving groan Hux dropped his head onto Kylo's shoulder. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Fumbling with the fastenings on the heavy robes Ren wore, Hux managed with difficulty to expose the man's midriff. There was a sizeable bump there, pushing out the softened abs that Kylo had always been proud of in the past.   
  
"No, really, don't look at me," Ren murmured, trying to pull the robes closed again, "it’s shameful how I've neglected my training."   
  
Lightning quick Hux grabbed those beloved, massive hands in his own and pressed a kiss to each palm. "I will look all I want Kylo Ren, husband of mine, because- if I'm not mistaken, and I so very rarely am- that's my child in there."   
  
Beneath his fingers Kylo froze, the colour draining from his face like the fall of a theatrical curtain. "What?"   
  
"I assume you didn't actually read the entire spell before you performed it? You just rushed in blindly as ever and then didn't even bother to read it properly after you began to panic? That sounds like you." Hux continued lightly, leaning over his shoulder to study the rest of the subsequent page. "See? Here! You just read one page, not two! I refuse to believe that even you read this sentence and still failed to understand it: 'If the Sith chosen to carry is of a species lacking the necessary organs, those organs will grow with the first success and remain until death to support all future attempts'. To translate: 'Kylo Ren, fool extraordinaire, has performed a spell to grow himself a uterus'. And presumably a vagina as well, eventually. Perhaps some ovaries? At least it doesn’t mention anything else dropping off, as it were, I am rather  _ fond _ of those features…."   
  
"Do you hate me?" The question was asked in a voice too small to possibly come from such a hulking man and Hux regretted his hectoring tone instantly.    
  
"Oh Ren," he said with a sigh, pressing as close as he could to Kylo’s frame, his fingers running over the swell of his husbands stomach once more. "Of course I don't hate you. I’ve missed you, yes. But this is a gift, a gift I never expected to receive. And you never expected to give.” He laughed slightly, tightening his arms in to hug that made Kylo squeak. “The means of obtaining it  _ were _ profoundly stupid, but by the looks of this spell you're going to suffer with its completion far more than even I could punish you. So we should say no more on the past and focus on the future. Our future, as a family."   
  
"I wanted to give you eternal life." Kylo said quietly, his hands shifting to cover the rest of his belly, staring at the feature with wide eyes. Despite the impressive size of his own hands, the two pairs weren’t sufficient to cover the whole expanse of flesh. “How did I not notice…”

“What would I do with eternal life? Stagnation isn’t attractive to me Kylo, I’d rather live one bright life with you,” Hux grinned fitfully as his brain came to terms with the implications, “with you, and  _ our baby _ \- which just kicked my hand, if I’m not mistaken, so Force alone know how you missed that.”

“Babies. I can feel them in the Force, now I know what to look for.”

“What? Twins?”

Kylo bit his lip and flushed slightly. “Triplets.”

“Oh my stars, Ren, you going to get so big.”


End file.
